One Mushroom

I just started this blog, and new reasons to feel sad are popping up like mushrooms.  Here’s one:  I can write anything I want about what it was like in our family when I was a little girl, and there’s no one left to say it wasn’t so. 

The Podium

When we moved into our loft in San Francisco, we scoured craigslist for free stuff constantly, and found an ad by Zocalo, a company that was moving and giving away just what we were looking for – room dividers.  My husband called me as he was rummaging through the Zocalo giveaways and said, “Ruth, they have a podium, do you want a podium?”  “Do I want a podium?  YES, I want a podium!”

When I was a little girl, I used to get up on a chair in the attic bedroom I shared with my little sister Lois, and rant.  She was my dutiful audience.  I wish I had a recording so I could know what I’d get so worked up trying to straighten the world out about.  If Lois were still around, I’d ask her.

Our 4,000 square foot loft is liberating for me because the possibilities for what to do with the space are almost endless.  It invites play.  All kinds of sides of me that haven’t had their day in the sun for a long time are coming out here.  The podium stands on a rug facing the main big space, and a few weeks ago I was seized by a need to address the gathered throngs, whoever they might be.  I started writing things down that I felt compelled to say.  This went on for days, weeks, me scribbling urgent messages on old notebook paper left over from my kids’ binders.  Most of it was driven by my sense of gratitude for the things I used to take for granted.  Losing so much has ripped away my automatic sense of entitlement, as a member of the middle class, to a more or less comfortable life.

I had some friends over one night, and before I could stop myself I grabbed the podium and started speaking.  I thanked the space we live in.  I talked about how the fact that it is going to be demolished – we don’t know when – makes us hyperaware of how precious each day is that we get to be here.  I said this was The Year of the Mother for me, and acknowledged three of the people in the room who had lost their mothers in the last year.  My husband chimed in with how we have right here in this room the bones of his mother in a box sent from Greece, waiting to be buried next to her husband.  I wasn’t going to bring that up if he didn’t.  Nobody batted an eye, a testament to what kind of friends I have.  I spoke about being a mother and how proud I am that my kids had both recently given me compliments about understanding them. “I can die happy now,” I said.  “That has been my big goal in life, for my kids to feel I get who they are.”  I didn’t say much more than that – my friends were spared – but if you keep reading this blog, you won’t be.

This is my podium.